


Of the Expanse of Outer Space

by susiephalange



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Cadet James T. Kirk, Cadets, F/M, Female Reader, Fluff, Post-Star Trek (2009), Pre-Star Trek: Into Darkness, Slice of Life, Starfleet Academy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-15
Updated: 2017-06-15
Packaged: 2018-11-14 10:09:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11205873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/susiephalange/pseuds/susiephalange
Summary: Laying in bed, Reader thinks over the times she has spent with Jim in Starfleet.





	Of the Expanse of Outer Space

**Author's Note:**

> I've wanted to write Cadet Kirk for a long time, and with a request, it would be silly of me to refuse...

On the weekends where there is no schoolwork to be done and all the exams are completed and you are left lying in the bed with your eyes fluttering open, heart beating softly, a sense of satisfaction flowing throughout, it is good. Feels even better when the space beside you in the bed is warm, and the body there belongs to the guy who you can’t believe fell in love with you. It’s not that you can’t believe he fell in _love_ with you. More like that he’s _with you_ , and has been for the last six months. Not that you’re not any good. It’s that he’s sort of nomadic, love-wise. But not lately. Turning in the sheets, you face the blond man, seeing how the sunlight falls onto his face through the curtains upon his face.

* * *

 

_When you had first met, it had been a sunny, sunny day, and just your luck the air filters in the classrooms had broken down in the fan units, leaving the air conditioning rendered useless. It was just your luck, and sweating like some kind of barnyard animal and toting piles of files for your xenoanthropology classes, you didn’t really have the right mindset to be looking where you were going._

_Also, just your luck, to not see over your files, and be knocked into by a guy who’d also not been looking where he was going. While your hair was stuck to your head and sweat compiling upon your lip, Jim Kirk looked like a sun god in the heat, his hair a halo of gold, smile apologetic yet handsome altogether. Everyone knew Kirk. Well, all the ladies, anyways; last semester, your roommate’s best friend had a fling, and wouldn’t shut up about the guy afterwards._

_“I didn’t see you there, Miss –,” He frowned, almost realising then he didn’t know your name._

_You shake your head, “It’s okay, Cadet Kirk. I didn’t either.”_

* * *

 

Sometimes, Jim Kirk looked like an angel. You say sometimes, because you’re sure he’s got the devil in him; how else does he get into so much trouble, and look good doing it? Luck? Genetics? Your bloodline showed you descended from scientists who took their work too seriously, what did that make you then, a stuck-up knowledge-seeker who’d file for divorce and share the news on their child’s birthday? (True story. It’s not a thing child-you took lightly). Kirk was the son of the one and only George Kirk, captain of the _USS Kelvin_. You’d say Jim had a right to be nomadic.

He never really spoke of his family, and that was okay. You didn’t either, and it just left you both living in the present. Going out for drinks every so often with McCoy, having study sessions with Uhura, finding him asleep on the couch with reruns of _Doctor Who_ still playing while he napped. You’d down the alcohol, and memorise the materials to study, and when Jim lost his place in the episodes of the ancient show, you’d rewind it for him on the holovid.

* * *

 

 _After helping pick up your files, he’d apologised, and gone off back to his running games with his pals. But after it, you couldn’t help but see him places, like it was_ Where’s Wally _but with Captain Pike’s protégé recruit everywhere. The bars. The library. Your dorm-room block. Your roommate Tonita thought he was some kind of stalker. You shook your head, and said it was a coincidence. Starfleet Academy, however prestigious, was still large to its own limits. It wasn’t that you didn’t like running into him. He looked like there was something more to him than the famed womaniser who dreamed of captaining a starship._

_But it’s three weeks later and he’s not on your mind when you look up halfway through your shift. Working at the medical clinic with McCoy is just to earn money, and keep up your accreditation of medical practice (who didn’t like a nurse-slash-studier of alien cultures?). But looking up, you see him. Jim is standing in the entrance, his hand wrapped up in a dish cloth. You also notice that his nose is coloured-in with bruising pigment, eyes watery. There’s a small cut under his eye, too._

_If you were attending to a patient, you wouldn’t drop everything and walk over to see the guy, what, you barely knew him. But you’re sorting out bandages for Leonard, who’s too lazy to sort them out himself, and gesture for Jim to sit in the triage seat._

_“Looks like a barfight, Cadet Kirk.” You raise an eyebrow, taking the dishtowel hand in yours, inspecting it. “Doesn’t look as bad as it could be.”_

_He snorted, and then winced. “You should see the other guy.”_

_You shook your head. “No thank you. Not a fan of conflict.” You sigh, and motion to the empty Medbay beds, “You’ve got glass in your hands. I can take it out, or I can have the doctor look at it.”_

_“I do not want the doctor.” Jim shakes his head. “Bones’ll only laugh at me.”_

* * *

 

In his sleep, he mutters something, that sounds like _punch it!_ or something. The pair of you were yet to go to space, but you knew inside you that he’d make a great part of a team when on board a space ship. And not just because of his genetics. At this, Jim turns, his head turning toward you, burying his fair face and hair into the space between shoulder and neck. He smells faintly of peppermint and motor oil, and your shampoo he borrows when staying in your dorm room.

It’s been ages since he’s been in his room, for a proper sleep. Always your bed, always your space. You wondered if he had a thing for not wanting to be alone. You didn’t mind. The evidence was nuzzling you, coming up through the layers of sleep. You wondered if his dreams were of the expanse of outer space, or perhaps of his own memories. People say that sometimes your dreams are from your past, but it wasn’t true for you. Your dreams were a vivid kaleidoscope of warmth, a jumble of faces you’d never seen before, events never to occur.

“________,” Jim breathes, his lips warm upon your skin.

* * *

 

_It’s raining when he finds you. It has been eight months after you patched him up, and with only a year to go until graduation, you are sitting on a pile of good marks and barely any sleep. You heard a day too late that he had run away into outer space. In fact, all but your roommate’s best friend had been taken away to space to fight against the rouge Romulan Nero, leaving you planet-bound and mopey._

_Perhaps it was because nobody had selected you for a ship. Perhaps it was because last you heard of Jim, he’d bedded the Orion cadet Gaila before running off into the stars to save the day (illegally, after cheating on the test). Perhaps you weren’t as detached as you’d tried to be from the guy, and the reason your heart felt like it did was because you felt…more for him. Damn it, you loved him, and stupid you hadn’t told him soon enough._

_But it’s raining when he finds you. You’re sitting on the terrible carpet in front of your dorm room, locked out after losing your keys somewhere through the day. As the news came that the peace between the Romulans had been kept, and Nero defeated, your friends returning, you felt overjoyed. You could all graduate in one years’ time, and all could go back to normal. But hearing that James T. Kirk, a lowly undergrad upon entering_ The Enterprise _had been promoted three tiers during the events, your heart sank. No way in the heavens would he, a captain, like you back when there were other fantastic people out there in Starfleet with more prestigious positions._

_“Mind if I join?”_

_You look up, and see him there. He’s wearing the yellow shirt, too, and it makes him look like a million dollars. Damn him and his silly ways of winning over the council. Winning a war. You don’t respond. Jim sits, anyway._

_“You didn’t get called in for the distress call on Vulcan?” He asks you. “I thought every cadet did.”_

_You shrug. “I was off-base. You’d just cheated on the test, and I was flown to D.C. for a research assignment. Or don’t you remember? Gaila sends her regards.” He sat there, silent, still. “Imagine being stuck on Earth when there was an important space battle going on. Sucked ass, Kirk.”_

_He frowned. “Why don’t you ever say my name? I mean, my first name?”_

_Your heart stutters at his voice. Damn him. Damn you. Why can’t you just be angry at him in peace? “I don’t?” you ask. You know the answer. You never call him Jim. Not to his face, anyways. In your family, a bloodline of scientists who took their work too seriously, first names were special. Not to be thrown around flippantly, kept in the heart of those who they loved. “Sorry, I guess.”_

_He shakes his head. “No, don’t be sorry, I was just wondering…are you mad at me? Uhura made it seem you were mad at me, but I don’t know why.”_

_You don’t know why either._

_“I’ll call you Captain Kirk instead,” you joke. But thinking about it, everyone probably calls him that now, since that’s what he is. “If you like.”_

_He’s silent._

_“I don’t know if you’re here because you’re saying goodbye,” you mutter, your voice above a sort of whisper. “Before you go off and make a life out in the stars.”_

_Jim shakes his head. “I wasn’t – goodbye?” You go to elaborate, but he’s too quick, “I was coming with a job offer. You’re highly recommended by Commander Spock, and Helmsman Sulu._ ________, _I…I missed you.” His eyes are so, so blue, and they’re looking through your soul. “Don’t tell me it’s just me.”_

_“It’s not just you,” you blurt out. “I –,”_

* * *

 

“Stop playing possum, possum,” you tease him, moving yourself to your side of the bed. It might be a double mattress because Starfleet Academy are stingy on anything that isn’t in space, but it didn’t mean there weren’t sides to the bed. A smile graces his lips as those eyes flutter open, lips part, the breath returns to his lungs to resume wakefulness. “Good morning, Jim.”

He rubs his nose, scrunching his face, yawning. “How’d you know I was awake?”

You grin. “Magic.”

“Y’know, I didn’t want to disturb your thoughts. You look pretty today,” He moves his arms, one behind his neck, the other moving under the sheets to cradle you closer to his torso. “Were you thinking about your graduation today?” His lips connect with yours, halting you from answering his queries, and adds, “Or about today’s launch of the _USS Enterprise_?”

 “To be honest, Jim…” you blink, “I completely forgot.”

He laughs, nuzzling into your side again. “It’ll be just you, me, the vast expanse of space…and eight hundred crew.”

“You sure know how to talk a girl up,” you chuckle, moving your arm so to hold your hand with his. “I was actually thinking of us. When we met. You know, stuff.”

“Not thinking of breaking up on me, doll?” Jim looks at you with an eye that reminds you of old earth tales of pirates, you’re not sure why. But, like always, he makes the quirk look good – almost insanely good on him.

You shake your head. “Not on the eve of her departure, captain.”

Jim bites his lip. “Did I ever tell you how you make my rank sexy, Lieutenant ________?”

“You did last night, I remember correctly,” you wink, stretching your limbs under the bedsheets. “Come on. Let’s boldly go where no one has gone before.”

**Author's Note:**

> If you have any requests, find me on Tumblr at @susiephalange, or [@phalangewrites](https://phalangewrites.tumblr.com/request_conditions) ʕ·ᴥ·ʔ✿


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